Monthly Archives: February 2016

Grindmother has released a video of her laying down vocals for her single “Age of Destruction.” It’s cool to see the behind-the-scenes of how any song is made, but this one is a little different. Grindmother’s guttural, ripped vocals are put down line by line, with vocal breaks in between.

Grindmother, 67, lent some screams to her son Rain Forest’s band, Corrupt Leaders, a couple years ago and liked it so much that she’s struck out on her own. The album “Age of Destruction” is set for release April 28.

Check it out — she starts singing so loud they have to move the mic back a bit.

FKA twigs is back again with a rather mellow R&B song, by her standards. “Good To Love” is pretty tame when you compare it the material on last year’s steamy Melissa EP, but it’s still distinctly twigs. Her vocals can range from a growl to a delicate vibrato, and her pretty vocals on “Good To Love” betray a deeper sadness when she says, “make my body come alive/I’ve got right to hurt inside.”

The video for “Good To Love” is completely disorienting; shooting it in black and white doesn’t help right your brain. Footage balances out between white sheets and tight shots of FKA twigs and her interpretive dance moves.

Twigs offers this description: “This whole video is a visual representation of me trying to wake up in the morning.” Knowing what we know about twigs, this is probably accurate.

There’s no word on whether “Good To Love” is part of an upcoming EP, but it’s good to see her putting out new music again.

You have to admire TEEN for doing things exactly how they want. The Brooklyn-based female quartet has always leaned toward the abstract, warped side of things, mixing space rock with indie-pop and ’70s psychedelic ephemera. No one makes music quite like TEEN, and they go all in, right down to their new video for “Free Time,” below.

The purple-hazy video features dancer Becca Kauffman from Ava Luna, and who also directs the video, which was shot straight to VHS (!) by Mika Altskan at Rollgate Studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

According to Kauffman:

‘Free Time’ was inspired by the 1980’s public access television performances of R. Stevie Moore, the post-punk choreographer Michael Clark’s videodance collaborations with his musical contemporaries, and the barebones production quality and interpretive dance accompaniment to Sid Harvey Fisher’s Astrology Songs.

Listen to “Free Time,” “All About Us” and “Tokyo” on Soundcloud:

“Free Time” is off their new album Love Yes, out now on Carpark Records. They’ve kicked off their North American tour and will perform at SXSW on March 16-20.

After her frantic run of albums over several years, Rihanna, paused, tweaked and molded, ripped down and rebuilt Anti. Anti is not a particularly happy or uplifting album either. Rihanna’s emotions shift constantly, from loneliness to lust, vulnerability to indecision.

But there’s still plenty about Anti to love. The depth and darkness she’s uncovered here is the farthest she’s come personally in her music, and it makes for a compelling and captivating album.

Her decision to drop the singles “BBHMM,” “American Oxygen” and “FourFiveSeconds” from Anti was the right one — and whether Anti yields an R&B hit doesn’t seem to concern her right now.

She begins by reclaiming her Barbadian accent on “Consideration,” forgoing her earlier Americanized vocals. “I got to do things my own way darling / “Will you ever let me?” she chants defiantly.

The interlude “James Joint” boils down her love life to smoking weed, making out and not giving a damn about anything else. Although it’s the briefest song, the swirl of soft electro-pop notes is the sexiest on the entire album. Another slow jam, “Kiss It Better,” features an‘80s-era guitar hook that could just as easily be a Prince write-off.

She can play the good girl just as easily as the bad, and it’s her prerogative which character she chooses to embody. She doesn’t need to waste time with emotional baggage on “Needed Me” (“But baby, don’t get it twisted/You was just another n—- on the hit list/Trying to fix your issues with a bad b*tch.”) Later on the album she plays the vulnerable woman who’s uncertain how to feel when she finds herself in the pangs of new love on the docile acoustic pop of “Never Ending.”

But her best work comes toward the end.

She lets loose on the doo-wop tune “Higher,” accentuating its distorted, wobbly strings, and on its sister tune — the slow, retro 1-2-3 beat of “Love on the Brain” – she’s never been more daring. “I’m tired of being played like a violin,” she says. When her voice is stripped of electronic assets and allowed to become grainy and raw, it shines.

By the time Rihanna closes Anti with a tender piano ballad, it’s clear she’s evolved; you get the sense that she’s come to terms with or is at peace with whatever demons she was fighting. Those annual album drops may now be a thing of the past.

Grindmother, the 67-year-old Canadian grindcore singer/songwriter who’s already built up a small legion of fans, has released the video for her song “Age Of Destruction.” It’s the title song off her upcoming debut, out April 28.

She’s been in the press now and again, in part simply because of her age, but it’s no fluke — she really can belt out the songs. There’s nothing fake here, and there’s not too many people who can grind their voice into the ground the way she does. Power to anyone who wants to scream with this intensity and put it on the airwaves.

The video is fairly minimalistic — it’s Grindmother and her band against a backdrop of what looks like a city being bombed and on fire.
Grindmother hopes to tour the states soon as well, but no dates have been revealed yet.

“Age Of Destruction” (lyrics by Grindmother):

Age of destruction
Trepidation abound
Life insignificant
Power to kill
Intention to destroy all hope
All that remains
Grasping to keep
All we have known
Is worthless now
Weapons to destroy all hope
Planet is weary
Stricken and sore
The game to win
Is world control

And watch the video for “Any Cost”:

Check out Grindmother’s work with the band Corrupt Leaders (of which her son is a member) on their Bandcamp page.

Let’s Eat Grandma are two teens from Norwich, UK — Rosa and Jenny, 16 and 17 who have been creating sludgy pop feelings since they were 14. In the world of new music, that’s extremely young. While their voices sound young as well, the moody music they create seems wise beyond their years, combined.

They’re also multi-instrumentalists, in case you’re wondering if they’re solely vocalists with a backing group.

Watch LEG’s video for “Deep Six Textbook,” where they drop down onto wet sand and just appear to be really close friends and look like sisters (they’ve been best friends since about 4). They filmed the video at Cromer, on the Norfolk coast, and appear to be the only two people on the planet there.

Rosa and Jenny also created the artwork for “Deep Six Textbook.”

Let’s Eat Grandma (LEG) have signed to Transgressor and their debut is scheduled to appear this summer.

It seems like every few months, Parquet Courts creates new music. Their most recent EP, Monastic Living, was released last November, and now they’re back with more. Frontman Andrew Savage talks about the origins of their new album, Human Performance:

“I began to question my humanity, and if it was always as sincere as I thought, or if it was a performance. I felt like a sort of malfunctioning apparatus. Like a machine programmed to be human showing signs of defect.”

Their prolific activity could be traced to Savage as well the band’s restlessness. Parquet Courts also released a single from Human Performance, “Dust,” with video of an unkempt schlub working and eating noodles in what must be a skeevy office, because the cameraman keeps wiping his video screen.

“The unavoidable noise of NYC (that) can be maddening, the kind of the impossible struggle against clutter, whether it’s physical or mental or social,” says singer and guitarist Austin Brown, who also produced and mixed the album. The new album is said to be a direct descendent of 2014’s Content Nausea and its analysis of modern anxieties.

Human Performance is out April 8 on Rough Trade. New tour dates are below the tracklisting.

Sludge/indie pop Boston trio Vundabar announced on their Facebook page Jan. 30 that $6,000 worth of equipment was stolen from their car in Philadelphia.

A gofundme page was launched. Here’s the note from the band — it sounds like they really didn’t want to have to ask people for money, but had no other choice:

Hello friends. You’ve heard this story before and unfortunately I’m sure you’ll hear it again. While staying over night in Philadelphia for a show that Vundabar was playing, our car got broken into and $6,000 dollars in music equipment was stolen. Needless to say this is deeply upsetting and while we can’t replace the sentimental value of these instruments, there’s the functional issue of the fact that we’ve been shanghai’d, on the hook for $6,000 dollars that we don’t have for things we need in order to continue this band. We feel lucky to be able to do what we do, and have the support of so many people. I wish there was a better avenue to take with these things but right now it seems like the only option is to pass the hat. Thank you always for your love and support.